Maternity hospital - Teething problems at new facility

THE opening of the €75 million Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) was inevitably going to have teething problems.

It has only been open for 12 weeks, so all of its own birth pangs have not been cleared up.

Some problems are probably the result of the dispute which initially delayed the opening, and it is necessary to deal warily with the statements issued by parties that were involved in that initial dispute.

A number of patients have been very complimentary, while others have been highly critical of both the facilities and the treatment they received there.

Six formal complaints are being investigated, while on the other hand there were 50 letters of appreciation from patients, but those complaints and compliments obviously reflect the views of only a tiny sample of the mothers who gave birth 1,407 babies at the hospital during its first month.

Some practices at the five-star CUMH facility have been criticised as chaotic by both staff and patients. One website comment likened the hospital to “Fawlty Towers”, while another criticised it for being more like A&E facility than a maternity hospital.

Such comparisons may be unfair, but they gain predictable credence due to the obvious failings of the Health Service Executive (HSE) in a wide range of areas.

Those failings have undermined confidence in the HSE, which is in danger of becoming the institutionalised affirmation of Murphys Law (i.e. if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong).

The CUMH project was started 15 years ago, so there was ample time to ensure that something as fundamental as ensuring proper staffing was ironed out in advance.

But senior members of the hospital staff have been warning that the welfare of both mothers and their babies are being “seriously compromised” by a shortage of experienced midwives, while the hospital is also short of three consultants.

The HSE has confirmed that it is already engaged in a recruiting campaign both nationally and abroad — as far away as Australia — to hire more than 50 midwives.

Permanent midwifery positions have already been offered to 31 student midwives who are due to qualify in September.

The hiring campaign amounts to a HSE admission of its own failings. With 15 years to prepare, it should have had the necessary staff levels at the ready before the hospital opened.

There are now promises that the necessary staff will be hired by September, but in the meantime, expectant mothers have to endure a kind of conveyor belt-style of midwifery as the hospital staff tries to get people in and out of the door as fast as possible. By the time the necessary extra midwives are hired, there is a danger that others will have quit in frustration, as a number of experienced midwives have already left CUMH.

The HSE is grossly overstaffed with administrative officials, but instead of tackling that problem, it has been capping the employment of vital frontline health workers, especially consultants and nurses.

This is not only administratively crazy, it is distinctly dangerous from a medical perspective, which should be the primary consideration of any health service worthy of the name.